Yesterday I had an email from a lady who said she wasn’t panicking, but after upgrading her computer to a new one and ‘ghosting’ the contents of the original hard disk to the new one, all the video from her JVC camcorder of her newborn had simply vanished. Could I help?

After ascertaining a few things such as type of PC (or Mac), whether the old hard drive had died, whether the supplier had backed it up before ghosting etc, I now wait to hear back to find out if indeed the files were still on her old drive.

I mentioned this story to someone who made the comment “I wonder if she had ever looked at the video or ever will?” True, there is anecdotal evidence that wedding videos are watched once, usually with family straight after the honeymoon and then never seen again, but it did lead me to think on the value of “precious memories”, a term vendors of cameras and camcorders are so fond of using.

Two and a half years ago, I made the trip back to the UK – my first since leaving in 1964 – and no I am not a POM! Part of the journey – a holiday – was to travel the “Top Gear Best Driving Road in the World” in Switzerland to Italy, but I also wanted to see old family favourites I visited as a kid; I was 8 when we left. These included Stonehenge, The White Horse and Giant, Bath and our old family home in a little village called Higher Cloughfold in Lancashire. The house was especially of interest as it was over 400 years old and an ex manor house complete with servants quarters and outsheds for animals, feed etc.

My Dad was a professional photographer, and when we left the UK, he had, all carefully graded and sorted, literally thousands of ‘slides’ of our UK trips packed away. These were our memories for the future. Sadly, the box containing all of these never made it to Australia so there is absolutely no physical history of our time there or even early days in Australia.

Two of my companions on the trip were my Canon XHA1 pro camcorder (with a pro car windscreen mount) and a small Fuji still camera. With these, I managed to get a record of the trip, but this became secondary in a way as the emotion of seeing these places “for real” was very powerful. Especially so was going to the house. I navigated my cousin straight to it – not bad after 45 years – and spent some time shooting footage from the road and down the sides.

I then plucked up the courage – camera still rolling – to knock on the door. A gentleman opened it, asked what I was doing as the large XHA1 can be a little intimidating, and then totally surprised me by asking me in and letting me shoot inside the house!

It was exactly as I remembered it, down to the carpet on the stairs to the upper floors.

After 10 minutes I left after thanking him, walked back to the car and literally broke down, the emotions were so powerful. It took me a good hour (and a large scotch) to regain my composure.

Time can never be re-lived; not even Dr Who can organise that (Series 1 episode “Father’s Day”) and so yes memories are important. My son will never be able to see the UK I saw with my Dad due to the lost slides, but at least I can now show him some remnant of it via my stills and footage. It therefore makes sense to keep jealous guard over this stuff (tapes, CF cards, hard disk, CDs whatever) as it IS important and as they say, you don’t know what you have until you have lost it.

And while the footage of the house I shot cannot rekindle the level of emotion I had at the time, it comes damn close.

Secondly, it also makes sense to take the very best footage (or still) that you can so learning all about your particular camera/camcorder is a good idea. There is nothing worse than being invited around for the boring “holiday slide show night” knowing there will be blurry shots, heads cut off and multiple shots of the same thing. So shoot for other people as well as yourself and knowing your equipment whether it be a $129 digi-still camera or a $10K camcorder makes no difference. But the quality of your shots and footage will show it.

Finally, make use of all the facilities open to you such as maps or geotagging, software tricks such as titles and transitions - try and tell a story and not just have photos of places and things.

By David Hague

David is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He lives at Sydney's Avalon Beaches nearly on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety, fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com